Mikester

…And yes, it does involve comic books, somewhat:

EDIT: Video has been removed, but you can hear a stream of the song (“White and Nerdy”) at Weird Al’s Myspace page, where the video is going to be uploaded eventually. So WATCH THAT (MY)SPACE.

Some of you folks who’ve been reading my dumb weblog for a while may remember when I was looking for a particular house ad for DC’s Hex series (the series that took the Old West character of Jonah Hex and made him all sci-fi ‘n’ stuff, in case you didn’t remember). Well, I didn’t find the one I thought I remembered, but it’s a similar one that commenter Layne had mentioned:

It was in Jonah Hex #89 (Feb ’85), and why it didn’t occur to me back then to go through the latter Jonah Hex issues to find the ad, I don’t know. And yeah, I know I mention in the comments section that I have a “cunning plan” for all this Hex stuff, and I still sorta do, but it’s going to have to wait until I get more of that “free time” I keep hearing about.

And as long as I’m just throwing up random scans, here’s one from Dynamite Magazine #3 (1974):

That’s just a lead-in to a reprinting of a couple pages from Hulk #1 (1962), and, alas, no actual heavy rapping with the Hulk is involved. The closest you get is a one page FAQ on ol’ Jade Jaws titled “Handy Hunks of Hulk History to Hold Over Your Friends” (“Until They Beat You Up For Talking About The Hulk All The Time” being the unstated conclusion of that phrase). For example:

No, that just wouldn’t do at all.

A couple days back, that rascally Chris Sims posted the Most Silver Agey word balloon in the entire Silver Age, and, yeah, that pretty much takes the cake. But since reading that post, I’ve found myself spotting panels and bits of dialogue here and there that make me say, “Yeah, that’s it, that’s the Silver Age!” Here’s one of them:

I love you, Robot Jimmy Olsen. That panel is from Superman #218 (July ’69), in a story reprinted from Action Comics #273 (Feb ’61).

I’m only presenting this next sequence (from Superman #225, April ’70) because it made me laugh for no good reason:

Yeah, I know, it’s Superman keeping another Superman in a cage…it’s a long story, and not entirely worth the trip. But really, what the heck is Super-Chess? Superman made up his own chess variant, and named it after himself? Man.

Okay, now I’ve seen the cover (of Superman #216, May ’69) for this next story dozens of times at the shop…Joe Kubert covers always catch the eye, but never did I look inside the comic until this weekend. So there’s this U.S. soldier in Vietnam, grown to massive size and apparently fighting for the other side, which leads another soldier to dub him thusly:

KING CONG. Oh good Lord.

And should you ever find yourself in a similar situation, fighting an apparent turncoat who’s been turned into a giant and now fighting for the Viet Cong, and Superman isn’t around to help, here’s a useful piece of advice:

Yeah, put those politicians to work for once.

So if Tim can post about Star Trek because I posted about Star Wars novels, then I can post about Star Wars novels again.

See how that works? Yeah, me neither.

Anyway, I have a flyer for the current Star Wars Legacy of the Force novel series currently being published, installment 2 (of 9) released only a couple weeks ago. The flyer includes the following blurb:

“Something so major and incendiary will occur during the Legacy of the Force series that we cannot even mention what it is – except to say that it will be sure to earn significant fan attention.”

Okay, I see that, I think “they’re killing off another character from the original films,” which is what they did to kick off the previous major novel series for the franchise. (If you don’t already know which character was killed off, you can find out here.) I’m sure we’ll see a lot of the characters created for the novels die or (in an least one significant case already, go pretty irredeemably evil), but for “significant fan attention,” as the publisher puts it, that would imply, say, Han eating some bad blowfish and kicking off, or something.

I’m trying to think of what else would be a “major and incendiary” change…return of the previously-dead major character? Kryptonite lightsabers? Star Trek crossover? As a long-term Star Wars sucker, it’s got me curious.

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Conversation between pal Dorian and I:

(discussion of Jason “Robin II” Todd’s revamped origin leads into…)

M: “…So in the revamped origin, Jason was a street urchin that was trying to steal the tires off the Batmobile.”

D: “I believe it was explained later on that Batman forgot to set the protective system on the Batmobile that night, which allowed Jason the chance to grab the tires.”

M: “So the single most anal-retentive man on the planet forgot to turn on his car alarm? C’mon.”

D: “Hey, he forgot to put on his Bat-condom when he slept with Talia.”

M: “Well, that was probably his first time having sex, so Batman just didn’t know any better.”

I always consider it a victory when I can make Dor burst out laughing.

We also discussed at length Felicia Kyle, Catwoman’s sister, who, to the best of our knowledge, only appeared once and was never referred to again. (That appearance being a Batman/Swamp Thing crossover, by the way.)

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In other news:

Here’s a Captain America ‘n’ Bucky wartime paper drive ad courtesy Booksteve.

Blockade Boy introduces us to the sexy, sexy Lancelot Steele, straight outta the first three years of Dazzler.

Archie and Betty, gettin’ it on…or are they? (I know it’s from a couple years back, but I was asked about this story, and, well, there you go.)

Pal Dorian has taken some liberties with my visage, with the help of the Scissor Sisters. (Warning: Sound, Flash, my face.)

So I came across the 1994 Starbur Corporation/Caliber Press merchandise catalog in a collection on Friday, and, flipping through it, found this:

Here’s a better look at it, in an image I totally stole from this Yahoo! auction:

And, if you’re so inclined, here’s an even bigger pic.

Okay, first, a Violator medallion? I don’t care if you’re the biggest Spawn fan in the world, you gotta draw the line somewhere.

Second, I kinda wonder how many of these were actually sold. Were there 590 Spawn fans who had to have a precious metal medallion of Spawn’s arch-nemesis?

Third, how many of them have survived ’til now? I imagine any unsold stock (and probably a good number of the sold ones) have been melted down and reshaped into more appealing and/or useful forms, like silver bullets to take care of that pesky neighborhood werewolf problem.

Fourth…well, I don’t really have a fourth, beyond “a Violator medallion?” For 600 bucks? I think I’d rather drop six bills on a piece of gold and a couple of rubies not molded into an oddly-designed comic book supervillain, thank you…well, okay, maybe I’d wear some Lex Luthor-shaped bling, BUT THAT’S IT.

So I was reading the latest Star Wars novel Bloodlines, written by Karen Traviss and the latest in the Legacy of the Force sequence of books. According to the timeline in the front of the book (and in the front of every Star Wars book), this particular installment takes place 40 years after the original Star Wars film, AKA “Episode IV” AKA “A New Hope.” Which means, of course, all the main characters (the ones that are still alive, that is) are in their 60s and 70s.

But that’s not exactly what I’m here to talk about. There’s a scene, very early in the novel, where a 71-year-old Boba Fett is paying a visit to his doctor:

“Dr. Beluine was one of only a handful who had ever seen him without [his Mandalorian helmet]. Doctors could handle disfigurement a great deal better than most.”

Okay, I realize the idea of an elderly Star Wars character visiting his doctor brings to mind, say, Han Solo waiting in line to pick up his medicine, or Luke receiving his Social Security benefits, and other exciting Star Wars action. Anyway, part of Boba’s initial appeal for the Star Wars fans, aside from being taken out by a blind guy and screaming like a little girl, was his sense of mystery. What did he look like under that mask?

Well, after Episode II, now we know. Since young Boba is a clone of his father, Jango Fett, and we’ve seen Jango maskless in that film (and you can see him maskless here, if you scroll down a bit), we can assume an adult Boba would look more or less like Jango. So now, the “mystery” aspect of Boba had more or less been done away with.

Over the years, as Boba had appeared in the “Expanded Universe” novels, the occasional reference had been made to his maskless visage being ugly, or unappealing, or…well, I forget the exact wording, but I don’t recall him ever being explicitly described as “disfigured” until this novel. (Perhaps someone with a better memory for the books recalls otherwise.) Then again, the novels were on their way to creating a much different backstory for Boba that were contradicted by the events in the flims, but that’s yet another issue.

Anyhoo, the above passage from the new Star Wars book is a fairly transparent attempt at reestablishing the mystery of Boba’s appearance. Boba Fett is now the Dr. Doom of the Star Wars universe, with his helmet now hiding some sort of hideous and unknown disfigurement.

At least until Lucasfilm licenses some kind of officially-sanctioned bust of Boba with a removable helmet, revealing his true appearance, much like what Marvel did with Doom.

And in conclusion, I’m a huge dork. Thank you.

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Okay, I know there’s a Boba action figure with a removable helmet.

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Employee Aaron reports that he had a customer on Monday look at the Pride of Baghdad cover feature on the Comic Shop News newsletter, and declare it “obviously pro-Iraqi propaganda.”

Well, obviously.

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Due to Marvel’s across-the-board postponement of their books due to the Civil War delay, our invoice totals have been pretty low the last few weeks…allowing me to make some pretty massive reorders without totally busting our budget. But I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, that looming threat of a coming onslaught of new Civil War tie-ins, arriving two or three dozen per week. Okay, it may not be quite that dire, but I am expecting a bunch of books to be suddenly dumped on us once the Civil War gears are back in motion.

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Talent #3 – Lots of ‘splaining going on in this issue, as our hero has his particular circumstance — able to access the abilities of victims of an air crash only he survived, in order to complete their unfinished business — explained more or less as plainly as I’ve explained here; we learn a little more about what the folks pursuing Nick are up to; and we find out just why that plane crashed. It’s nice that readers aren’t continually strung along, but instead are thrown a bone once in a while to give us the feeling of forward movement, that the story is working toward something rather than just running in place with a “avenged dead soul” every issue. The central conceit of the book is a strong one, kind of a reverse Deadman, and makes for good ‘n’ fun reading.

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“Marvel to unite ‘Avengers’ for movie”

“[Marvel] intends to release a live-action version of ‘The Avengers’ — a team dubbed as ‘Earth’s mightiest heroes.'”

[…]

“Executives spoke briefly about their ‘Avengers’ plan Wednesday during a presentation to Wall Street analysts at the Merrill Lynch Media & Entertainment Conference in Pasadena.

“The comic book ‘The Avengers’ began as a team consisting of superheroes Thor, Ant-Man, Wasp, Iron Man and Hulk. Later, Captain America and a host of others joined. Executives didn’t say exactly which of Marvel’s superheroes would be depicted in ‘The Avengers’ movie.”

Dear God: please let there be a live-action Ant-Man in this movie. Thank you, Mike.

…But then, Garrett Morris did pretty much perfect the role:

image found here

The Comic Reader #110 (Sept. 1974) – art by Ron Wilson

From the news blurb inside:

“Roy Thomas resigned his editorial post at Marvel Comics as of August 13. He will be staying on as free-lance writer of CONAN, etc. Reasons for his resignation were not given but it’s known that it was due to a disagreement.”

Heath Ledger thinks superhero movies are…well, see for yourself:

“‘I actually hate comic book movies, like fucking hate them, they just bore me shitless and they’re just dumb,’ Ledger told press at the Toronto Film Festival.”

I know he follows this up with good words about Batman Begins and why that particular film made him want to be in a superhero film his own self, but still…I wonder how the studio feels about this?

Anyway, in other news:

Chris “Lefty” Brown wants to know:

“How easy would it be to exert our collective bloggin power (and some comic convention booze) to get Mike Sterling to make an appearance in a Swamp Thing comic book? We must work on this.”

…I’ll just settle for writing Swamp Thing…that Swampy/Legion of Super-Heroes team-up must happen.

Steven thinks more superheroes should die, give more message boarders heart palpitations.

Speaking of “dead” heroes, Loren has issues with Skeets just happening to locate a direct-line ancestor of Booster Gold in the 21st century.

When Fangirls Attack links to a particular person’s weblog…linkee unclear on concept of “the internet.”

Greg at Comics Should Be Good explains why you should own Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol run. And he’s right…you should own it. And it’s coming out in that convenient trade paperback form which is popular with the kids these days, so you have no excuse not to own it.

Not really anything to do with comics, but Bill ranks his five favorite sandwiches, complete with a bonus “What’s Distracting Patricia” (see also).

Eddie returns with a tale of a nice yard sale find. I never find cool stuff like this…all the yard sales I see have the same selection of broken blenders, curling irons, and old shoes. No one around here reads, apparently.

Alan reviews the Harvey Pekar-edited The Best American Comics 2006. Somewhere, someone is wondering why Kabuki wasn’t in this book.

BLUE DEVIL TAROT CARD. Hey, why not?

In case you haven’t noticed, Tom Peyer has teamed up with some of his super-pals, and what was once the totally awesome Superfrankenstein is now the totally awesome-er Superfrankenstein and the Monster Force, complete with Jamie Delano, Stuart Moore, Mark Waid, and one or two comments section trolls that everyone enjoys picking on and laughing at.

This Is Pop Culture is always a nice round-up of vintage toys, ads, comics, and TV shows, along with current news regarding same. Pay a visit, won’t you?

Apparently I’m distracting Patricia.

And I’m linking to pal Dorian’s post in direct defiance of his draconian linking policy. So take that, you!

Just in case you were wondering, no, I wasn’t working up to any kind of “conclusion” or making a “point” with all my Wolverine posts from the last week (like I did with “Bat-Week” a few months ago). No, sometimes, just sometimes, a boy’s gotta post about Wolverine.

And if people tell me to stop doing it…that makes me do it some more, out of spite. So take that, you.

In other news:

Buffy creator Joss Whedon takes over Marvel’s Runaways – book presumably moves to quarterly schedule.

We’ve suddenly had a small bump in interest in Runaways, with at least one person saying all the news about the original creative team leaving got him to try the book out. You know, in the “hey, everybody’s lamenting their loss, they must have been doing some good work” sort of way, not in the “finally, they’re off the book, I can read it” way.

And, my smart-aleckiness aside, I am curious as to how Whedon’s addition to the title will affect sales. As it stands now, despite the online good word-of-mouth, the comic is, at least for us, a low-to-mid-range seller. It’s solid and consistent, more than New Excalibur, less than Hulk.

The first Whedon issue (and probably the next couple) will almost certainly be ordered in huge numbers…his Astonishing X-Men has been a success, outselling the other regular monthly X-books, and I’m sure most retailers will expect some of those sales to translate to this new title. However, Runaways isn’t an X-book, and it doesn’t have characters people know from movies, so I imagine sales on Whedon’s Runaways will probably eventually settle at “better than it was selling before, but not selling as well as people are probably expecting.” Yeah, I know, that’s some prediction.

Basically, I’m saying this is going to be a tricky one to order. Hmmmm…there’s some kind of algebraic equation there, somewhere, with “number of regular Runaways readers” plus “number of sales of Astonishing X-Men over sales of Uncanny X-Men and X-Men” minus “people reading Astonishing X-Men because of Whedon who aren’t interested in Runaways” plus “potential number of people buying two to five copies of Whedon’s first issue for investment purposes” plus “number of extra copies Marvel is going to coerce us into buying in order to obtain the inevitable limited variant incentive covers” minus “people who drop the book due to creative team change….”

Isn’t comic ordering fun?

from Hembeck #6 (Sept. 1981) – by Fred Hembeck, natch

The True Origin of Wolverine – 31 pages detailing the character’s creation and history, heavily footnoted.

Wolverine’s Top Ten Villains – “#11 – Fatty foods.”

Three iconic images of Wolverine, and one image of Wolvie fighting Darth Maul.

If you’re lucky, you can get this guy to appear at your party or other special event. Here are a bunch of other folks you can get as well. (I imagine the person playing Elektra just kinda hangs around the office a lot, reading the paper and waiting for the phone to ring.)

Custom full-face Wolverine helmet. Holy Hannah.

Some folks don’t like Wolvie: Sequart, Title Undetermined, Howling Curmudgeons (halfway down page).

“Is Wolverine in too many books?”

“yea, marvel seems to be allowing wolvie to be in almost every book, i dont really think they understand what they are doin got the poor guy, he never gets any sleep, and they put him back in the yellow spandex, and he has to sit and watch an australian play him on the big screen…”

“COMPRISONS [sic] BETWEEN WOLVERINE AND BENJAMIN” – “Wolverine has claws, Benjamin has no claws and clips his finger nails regularly.”

Courage and possibilities, friends, courage and possibilities.

Wolverine versus Freddy Krueger fan art, from this site.

Wolvie South Park-style.

Wolvie Amiga 500-style.

“The Wolverine and Jubilee Page is a fansite dedicated to one of the most interesting, fantastic, comic book duos around. Wolverine and Jubilee have been partners for years, and the great stories that comic book writers have spun about them continue to create and inspire devoted fans. So, welcome to the site! Batman and Robin ain’t got nuthin’ on these two!” The webmaster of this page also wrote an honest-to-goodness X-Men novel, so good on her.

Custom cutie Wolvie super-deformed bunny thing.

My personal pick for the best live-action Wolverine ever. (Yeah, it’s a self-link, you’ll live.)

Chris takes down Marvel Team-Up #117 (featuring Wolverine and Spider-Man), beats it mercilessly, and dangles a loogie in its face.

A great pic of Wolvie from Outcast Studios.

Urban dictionary definitions of “Wolvie.” To wit: “A useful pet name for your boyfriend if he likes to emulate a certain marvel superhero.”

Wolverine and Rogue relationshippers site – I like the drinking game.

Superman teams with Wolvie, Superman is Wolvie.

A page of Wolvie illos with a weird 3-D applet/Javascript/whatever cube thingie floating at the top of the page, there.

What’s Distracting Patricia?

Some neat CG renders of our favorite Canadian mutant.

Berserker Wolverine action figure review. Lots of other Wolvie action figure reviews on this site as well.

I don’t know what’s going on here, but that’s a great image of Wolvie.

“As many of you know, Nate decided to be Wolverine for Halloween…” The guy built himself retractable claws for his costume…enjoy the gallery of the costume in progress, the finished product, and his triumphant drunkenness at the Halloween party that followed. VICTORY IS HIS.

“Snake Eyes vs. Wolverine. Who wins?”

“I don’t care how hyped up SE is, there is no way he could even come near Wolverine. SE would never be able to sneak up on him, because Wolvy can smell his stench from a mile away, and the whole adamantium skeleton thing, the healing factor, and the fact that he’s an X-Man, SE should just kill himself.”

Wolviex.com – Flash interface, sound, pics, and and other Wolvie stuff.

Wolvie video game sprites.

YTMND ahoy – Wolvie’s one weakness, Wolverine says (not safe for work, kinda dumb, but made me laugh), Wolverine is a bad influence, Emo Wolverine, Wolverine really needs a beer, Wolverine works it, and Wolverine rules.

YouTube ahoy – Wolverine versus Bart, Wolvie’s animated origin, Wolverine versus Godzilla, “Wolverine Dance,” stop-motion Wolverine versus Kirk(?), stop-motion Wolverine versus Spider-Man, and Wolverine getting dressed:

* Maybe.